After nine years living in Ireland, I am slowly beginning to understand the consequence of the expression “the long finger.” Putting something on the long finger essentially means forgetting about it until some unspecified point in the future. Everyone does it at some point in time, hoping that if the finger is long enough, by the time it gets remembered it will no longer be of any importance.

Ireland’s political elite are especially good at putting things on the long finer. Tricky, difficult, awkward or complicated issues are put on the long finger, while small headline grabbing issues are dealt with as a matter of priority. Issues requiring thought, planning, foresight and joined up thinking are relegated to a committee and promptly forgotten about. I’m convinced there’s a government appointed agency tasked with the introduction of the euro still in existence. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if there are still meetings of the task force organising the Pope’s visit to Dublin.

Ireland loves its committees. Its politicians, trained through decades of serving on town and county councils enjoy nothing more than sipping tepid water from chipped glasses and scribbling in the margins of the agenda. They’ve been schooled in making points of order, raising issues in Any Other Business and agreeing dates for the next meeting.

Social Partnership, proportional representation and the clientilist model of Irish politics promotes the use of committees as a way of discussing issues. An issue, such as unemployment becomes an irritant, and government – tired of having to deal with it every day in the Dáil – decides to form a task force. They appoint one of society’s better known members to be its chair. Maybe a semi-retired judge. The chair is delighted because he gets a small stipend and, if he’s lucky, the media will name the committee after him.

In Britain, if someone is successful in public life, he gets the title “Lord.” In Ireland, he becomes a report.

The chairman then selects the committee. It must include a few of the lesser-known backbenchers. And if there are Dublin TDs then there must be a couple of rural TDs (we can’t let Dublin have everything, after all). And then there’ll be a couple of the tamer senators. It’s always good to have a celebrity on the committee, so we’ll have a hurler, and there will be a few distinguished business people. There are, of course, fewer distinguished business people in 2010 than there were in 2007, but with nothing else to do but panic about bank shares, membership of the committee is a form of therapy for some of them. They can probably get it on VHI.

But what about the Social Partners? OK, add a middle-ranking trade union official, someone from Ibec, a couple of community groups and a sheep farmer, and we’ve got the committee.

The Task Force on Innovative Employment and Economic Reprioritisation now exists. Give it a website (with a semi-permanent ‘under construction’ sign), set up a few public consultation sessions in Dublin Castle and a Tullamore hotel, and you’re ready to go. A logo would help, so that’s a sub-committee formed.

It doesn’t need to do anything. The purpose of the Task Force is to exist. Much like TG4, we don’t want it to do anything, but it’s nice that it’s there. The committee’s theoretical purpose is to present a report to the minister on innovative employment and economic advancement containing an analysis of international best practice, a report on the views of stakeholder focus groups and some costed policy recommendations. Its actual purpose is, of course to be a handy excuse for the Minister when he is being tackled by Opposition TDs.

“We’ve set up a Task Force” bellows the Minister. “And it’s not my job to pre-empt the findings of that committee.” He sits down, happy.

In a couple of years time, when it has run of out sub-committees and everyone has had an opportunity to stage a theatrical walk-out (the union official, important chap that he is, is allowed two theatrical walk-outs. Nobody notices), the Task Force presents its report. It even has a logo, and the media helpfully names the report after the chairman. His wife is delighted.

The government, not entirely keen on all of the recommendations, decide that the report should be published on a Tuesday afternoon half an hour before Declan Kidney announces the Irish Six Nations squad. The chairman, photographed outside Government Buildings with his report (note the logo) has given the State some service.

The report, briefly dissected by a few interested bloggers, is given a few paragraphs in one of the less well-read sections of the Sunday papers and is quietly forgotten about. It may be that some of the easier recommendations are adopted as government policy but the chances are that the more complex issues are put on the long finger and the committee is sent back to do some more work.

The economy is cyclical. The world is globalised. The problems are complicated. But somewhere deep inside a government agency, a couple of backbenchers and a sheep farmer are discussing logos.

Welcome to Ireland.